Web of Justice

by J J Miller

  “And what did she say?”

  “She was adamant that her son didn’t die in that fire, and she said she can prove it.”

  “She can prove it? How?”

  “The poor lady didn’t have the money to fly her kid’s body home, and he hadn’t taken out any insurance, so she had to have him cremated in Mexico and brought him back in an urn.”

  “The poor woman.”

  “But when she went through customs something set the scanner alarm off.”

  “What?”

  “There were two bullets in the ashes.”

  30

  Bella had been gone for three hours. I couldn’t sit down or stay put, as though the mere act of moving was productive and any moment of stillness was surrender. And that’s what was killing me: the intensity of my despair being outweighed by futility.

  We’d discussed whether or not I should call Francine and decided that would only alert her to the fact that we were onto her. We had to track her down undetected. So that meant more waiting in the midst of an acute crisis in which every second counted. My mind raced at light speed but only crashed into walls. Every effort to conjure up a lead from the depths of my brain ended at the same dead end: we had nothing to act on. How could you get closer to someone when you didn’t know where they were? And with every wasted second, my little girl moved further out of reach.

  I had to force myself to shun any mental images of her present condition.

  Straight after my call to Cassinelli, I’d asked Jack to begin reviewing everything in Cassinelli’s file as well as his own follow-up inquiries. It was no conspiracy theory now. A connection between the four killings could give us a vital clue.

  There was no telling whether Francine was the brains behind Bella’s kidnapping. But we knew she had company. From the footage we saw, the way Bella had been snatched and pulled into the car, we suspected a man was involved. Then we had the anecdotal descriptions of a man in the black Lincoln—bald-headed, gaunt face.

  While Jack was on the case work, I’d asked Charlie to drill down on Francine Holmes.

  I was hoping like hell that these two channels of inquiry might interconnect and reveal once and for all who we were dealing with.

  Claire walked up to me wiping tears off her cheeks.

  “Cicily Pines started following Bella on Instagram,” she said. “Bella was beyond excited. Then they were trading comments. It was a dream come true for her. Cicily was very sweet with her. Bella was so excited but kept a cool head at the same time. It was one of the first signs I recognized that our little girl was maturing as an individual, the way she was able to ‘keep it real’ as they say. Why would she think there was any harm in ducking outside to see her?”

  I put my arm around her. Was this the beginning of a new life neither of us wanted—a life in which our daughter was only a thought, a memory, a love revived from within us?

  Jack’s voice broke my train of thought.

  “Let’s assume the killer used the same gun for each of the four murders,” he said. He must have sensed that we needed a distraction, that we needed to drag our minds out of a forlorn future and into the present.

  “Why would they use the same weapon?” said Claire. “Travelling around with a gun would be risky.”

  “True,” said Jack. “But we know a Glock was used in the Anaheim murders and in Miami. And let’s assume, for argument’s sake, that the bullets in Kyle Chambers’ ashes came from a Glock. If the killer didn’t use the same gun, he’d have to source a gun on the black market in three different locations. Why go to all that extra trouble when you’re confident you’ve already got an untraceable weapon?”

  “Okay,” I said. “But if that’s the case, he would have crossed the border into Mexico with a gun. Obviously that’s not unheard of, but like Claire says it’s a big risk.”

  “A risk that can be minimized,” said Jack. “It’s easy to conceal a weapon in a car’s body work, inside a door panel. He only had to hope customs would give the vehicle a light once over instead of pulling him aside for a thorough search.”

  “And if he’s driving the Lincoln, or being driven in a late model Lincoln, wouldn’t customs be more inclined to wave him through?”

  “You’d have to say yes. Unless they took him for a drug lord.”

  “But are we talking about searching border customs data for a car we don’t have the license number for?” I said. “If we are, then we’re nowhere. All we have is the fact that the guy drives a black Lincoln. That hardly narrows it down.”

  “And who’s to say he even took the Lincoln over the border? He could well have been in a hire car.”

  “Exactly.”

  “What if he didn’t drive?” said Claire.

  “Well, if he flew we’d have to discount him using the same weapon,” I said. “No one’s going to be able to jump on a plane strapped with a side arm.”

  “Not unless you’re law enforcement who’s done their flying armed training course,” said Jack. “Transport Safety Administration regulations. And we have no reason to believe this guy is a cop.”

  “He could pack a weapon case into his carry-on but then he’d have to declare it to the airline, which again would leave an unwanted trail.”

  “What if he didn’t need to?”

  “What?”

  “What if he flew himself? What if he could somehow bypass the normal security protocols?”

  Jack and I looked at each other. Claire was onto something.

  “Right,” Jack said. “But if we’re talking a single engine Cessna, he’s still going to have to deal with customs and immigration, just like everyone else.”

  “What if he doesn’t?” I said. I was suddenly springing with fresh energy. It was a lead. A thin one, but still a lead. “Jack, what are the dates of the murders in both Florida and Mexico?”

  Jack took a minute before replying. “Aaron Rybka killed in Miami September 6, 2016. Kyle Chambers killed in Puerto Escondido August 13, 2016.”

  “Charlie,” I said, but I didn’t need to ask her to drop what she was doing.

  “I’m on it,” she said. “I’ll scan all the registered flights in and out of those two destinations around those two dates.”

  “How long do you think...” I began.

  “I’ll know within two minutes,” she said.

  No one spoke a word spoke as the seconds ticked by. I went over to Charlie to watch her work. She flicked rapidly from one program to the next, one window of dense code supplanted by another. Every few seconds she brought up another small black window into which she quickly typed lines of code. She only paused when her computer’s memory spun its wheels trying to keep up with her commands. In less than two minutes, she was done.

  “A plane with the registration number N651MM flew LA to Miami a day before Aaron Rybka was killed and left the following night. Then, on the morning before Kyle Chambers’ death, the same plane flew LA to Puerto Escondido and left four hours later.”

  Charlie had the details up on her screen. Jack leaned in to read them.

  “Hell, this guy’s got some cash. That’s a Bombardier 45XR. A Learjet. Thirteen mill’ brand new. That would get you from LA to London in two and a half hours. Flying LA to Miami or Mexico is basically a trip to Starbucks.”

  “So the guy’s minted,” I said. “Who’s it registered to?”

  Charlie knew that question was coming. She already had the registration details up.

  “The Halo Council,” she said.

  “The Halo Council? What’s that?” said Claire.

  To everyone else in the room, the Halo Council meant nothing. But the name shot me back years to another country, to what now seemed like another life. And now that life was coming flooding back—and this time it wasn’t a bad dream, a PTSD episode I’d have to ride out and recover from, it was real life. It was a wide-awake nightmare, because suddenly I knew Bella’s abduction had nothing to do with her Instagram account or Claire’s attitude towards her socia
l media profile—it was all to do with me and what I’d done in Afghanistan.

  “It’s an NGO,” I said, trying to keep my mouth moving as my mind raced through the memories of a time and place I wanted to keep far behind me. “A non-government organization. The Halo Council was running a few development projects in Afghanistan when I was there.”

  My body had gone cold. I was weak with nausea.

  “Brad, what is it?” Claire said.

  “My unit was involved in an incident in Nangarhar Province. Our patrol came under attack in a crowded marketplace and we engaged. About twenty civilians were killed in the crossfire. There were women and children. One of the casualties worked for the Halo Council. He gave us hell afterward. Blamed us for every death, demanded court martials, dismissed the military investigation as a cover-up. Slandered us in the press.”

  “Who?”

  The face was coming back to me. He had confronted me once outside the Bagram Air Base, where we’d been stationed after the incident. A tall man, intense nature. He’d raved at me like a preacher. He had drills for eyes and a spear for a tongue, and me and my Marines were the target of his ferocious outrage.

  “Victor Lund,” said Charlie, as I sounded the name in my head. “He’s the founder and owner of the Halo Group, formerly the Halo Council. Here he is.”

  She had brought up a photo. We all crowded around her laptop to see the image of a man staring back at us—bald head, hollowed cheeks, deep-set intense eyes.

  This was not the man I remembered. Back then Victor Lund was overweight and double-chinned. The difference in appearance was striking. But there was no doubt whatsoever: the skull-faced individual staring back at me from the computer screen was the man who’d kidnapped my daughter.

  31

  “Where’s the plane now?” I asked Charlie.

  “The last record I can find says it returned to LAX from New York five days ago,” she said.

  “It’ll still be there,” said Jack. “No plane’s going to move without the flight data being recorded.”

  I called Cassinelli and told him to forget about Alvarez. I needed him to get to LAX pronto to stake out the area where Lund kept his plane.

  There was no reason to think Lund was heading for his plane. My gut feeling was that he was buying time to get to a location that he felt was secure, and from there he’d contact us again. With some difficulty, I reasoned that if he’d merely wanted to kill Bella, she’d already be dead. He wanted something, and Bella’s life was his bargaining chip. Still, if there was any movement around his plane, I wanted to know about it. We were only a twenty-minute drive away, and I had to trust that Cassinelli would stay sharp and sober on his watch.

  Charlie pulled up all the freely accessible information on Lund and the Halo Group she could find. It turned out Lund had been born into serious money. He was the only son of Jens and Mette Lund. His father had headed up Nordec, a pharmaceutical giant founded by his grandfather. After his father had taken the reins of the corporation, he’d relocated its headquarters to New York City and turned it into one of the world’s biggest conglomerates. Victor, a devout Christian, had used his inheritance to found the Halo Council ten years ago. He said in one interview that he wanted to invest his wealth in helping people who were less fortunate. But more specifically, he said he wanted to repair some of the damage wrought by America’s various military interventions in the developing world. To that end, the Halo Council established aid programs in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen and Uganda. Halo’s efforts in Afghanistan were aimed at turning farmers away from growing opium and helping them get started with alternative crops. The combined cost of these efforts had amounted to a tiny fraction of his fortune but he’d been happy to run them all at a loss.

  Francine Holmes had been part of the Halo Council from its inception. She was based in Kabul for five years as development director while I was there but I couldn’t recall ever meeting her. That didn’t surprise me. Most foreign aid workers in Kabul never left the city. They just moved about in their bulletproof four-wheel-drives, going from the guarded razor-wired compounds where they slept to the guarded razor-wired offices where they worked. They filed reports on projects being carried out in rural villages they’d never dare visit. Then after work, they’d be escorted in their bulletproof cars to guarded razor-wired bars. After a few months, they’d return home to the States feeling heroic, having earned their “worked in a war zone” badge of honor.

  Charlie continued reading out her findings. The Halo Council had withdrawn from Afghanistan five years ago, she said, and that coincided with a promotions company started up by Lund called UpliftInc. As Francine had told me all those months ago, the newly formed Halo Group company ran an operation designed to advance the careers of a select group of YouTubers. The Halo Group donated money to their channels and managed their public performances. Most of the YouTubers in their stable openly declared themselves as Christians, but that didn’t seem to be an absolute requirement. Cicily Pines was just one of many members whose subscriber bases had exploded with Halo’s help.

  “Good old wholesome entertainment,” said Charlie. “Nothing wrong with that. God knows, the internet is swimming in trash.”

  “That may well be true,” I said. “But according to Cassinelli, Victor is not out to just promote the Good Word, so to speak. He wants to send the competition to hell.”

  “What do you mean?” said Charlie.

  “I mean, the theory is that he’s cleaning house, ridding YouTube of its most offensive members. But not just any old online brat—he’s got his sights on the big influencers whose subscriber numbers rank in multi-millions.”

  “Give me the names again,” said Charlie.

  Jack was back to his laptop and called them out.

  “Luke Jameson, Toby Connors, Aaron Rybka and Kyle Chambers.”

  While Charlie worked away, Jack and I discussed tactics. I asked him to start property searches. If Lund was not taking Bella out to LAX, he must have somewhere else to go. Somewhere that wasn’t obvious.

  “This is interesting,” said Charlie. “Three of the victims were once backed by Halo Group.”

  I went over to her.

  “See here. They are listed among the live creator appearances at three UpliftInc events two years ago. Jameson, Rybka and Chambers. Not Connors, though.”

  “So maybe part of their crimes was disloyalty,” I said. “I’ve seen how Francine responds to what she perceives as treachery.”

  “Looks like it went way beyond that,” said Charlie. “All three began to make names for themselves for all sorts of horrible behavior—trolling, making offensive remarks about disadvantaged people, fat people. Chambers alone was known to being outrageously misogynistic.”

  “I thought you got kicked off YouTube if you breached community guidelines,” Claire said.

  “That’s true,” said Charlie. “But these guys saved their worst material for other platforms. They kept their YouTube channels relatively clean while indulging in vile behavior on Twitch or 4chan.”

  “Twitch? 4chan? I’ve never heard of them,” said Claire.

  “Practically no one under thirty has heard of them,” said Charlie. “But they’ve become the favorite platforms for young guys to behave deplorably towards other people. As someone who’s been a target of unrestrained misogyny, I can kind of see the point of this Lund guy’s crusade.”

  Claire turned to me.

  “But why in God’s name has he taken Bella? This makes no sense to me whatsoever. She’s done nothing hurtful She hasn’t got millions of followers. What the hell has she done to upset this maniac?!”

  She looked at me like I should have an answer. I did of sorts, or at least I had an educated guess. But it was too painful to share it unless I absolutely had to.

  My phone sounded a message alert. Everyone heard it. As I took the phone out of my pocket, I looked at Claire, expecting hers to buzz too. But it didn’t.

  A message from an unknown number w
as displayed on my phone. I opened it to find someone had sent me an audio file.

  I pressed play.

  “Mr. Madison,” a women’s voice began with a whisper. “This is Francine Holmes.” She sounded emotional and rushed. Out of breath. “I’m so sorry about your daughter, but I have to tell you something. Victor Lund intends to kill her. You must believe this was not what I had agreed to, but I’m telling you now in the hope that you can stop him. But you must hurry. We’re in Reseda. Seven-three-four-one Enfield Avenue. Victor has locked her in ...”

  The message ended. I played it again. The way Francine kept her voice low and hurried, it seemed like she’d made the call secretly and then suddenly feared she was about to be discovered.

  “What’s the number?” asked Charlie. I read it out to her. She tapped away for a few seconds and then waited. Moments later, she spoke again. “It checks out. Her phone location is the same address. In the back yard to be precise.”

  “Come on, Jack.”

  We headed to the door, Jack keying the address into his maps app as he walked.

  “Brad, what if this is a hoax?” said Claire. “What if she’s just drawing you into a trap?”

  “What choice do I have? I have to go.”

  32

  Before we’d reached my car, Jack’s phone had calculated the estimated travel time.

  “It’s going to take us about an hour twenty to get there,” he said. “The freeway’s jammed in a couple of places.”

  When every second counted, eighty minutes seemed like an eternity. A fat slab of time we just didn’t have to waste. I sidelined my agitation and kept my focus on the road. There was only one way to access the San Fernando Valley: the heavily trafficked San Diego Freeway. Once we’d reached the 405, I took every chance I could to get ahead, flicking the Mustang from lane to lane like a getaway driver.

  I kept replaying Francine’s message in my head, particularly the part where she had said Lund intended to kill Bella. But Claire’s question nagged at me—was this a set-up?